About
The short version
My name’s Gareth, and I’m a solo developer with a soft spot for the harmonica. I won’t pretend to have any real talent with the instrument, but I sure do love playing it. Whilst my harmonica playing won’t set the world on fire but I am a decent software developer and I wanted to see if my skills writing code could help me become a better player.
I was frustrated with the tools out there for our beloved little harps. I wanted something tangible and objective to tell me I was actually improving, because I don’t fully trust my own ear. Something that sounded great to me might sound awful to everyone else and I’d never know.
Personally, I prefer to learn from books and videos and I didn’t want to be tied to a tutor, a training course, or my desk. I wanted something I could throw in a bag and take on a trip, to make use of whatever scraps of practice time I had, wherever I was. A harmonica is the easiest instrument in the world to carry around and I wanted the app to feel the same.
When I got Harmonova to the point where I was genuinely enjoying using it, it occurred to me that other people might get something out of it too. I truly hope you do and whether you do or you don’t I’d love to hear about it.
One person, by design
I think it’s only fair you know what you’re getting into, so here it is: Harmonova is built by one person. Me. In and around the rest of my life.
I’ve come to think of that as a feature rather than an apology. There are no investors deciding the roadmap and no marketing department writing the privacy policy. When the site says your audio never leaves your device, that’s not a positioning statement — it’s just how I wanted my own tool to work. When you email support, it lands with the person who wrote the code and can actually do something about it.
The trade-off is of course the pace of development. Updates arrive when they arrive, and there’s a list of things I’d still love to build (the release on other platforms chief among them). But every bit of feedback gets read, and the things people ask for genuinely shape where Harmonova goes next.
The hardest part, if you’re curious, was the note detection getting that reliable enough to trust. Harmonicas don’t make it easy: bends, chords, and the realities of a phone mic in a noisy room all conspire against you. Getting that to a place where I’d believe the score it gave me took the longest, and it’s the part I’m quietly proud of.
Harmonova is a labour of love, and I hope it helps you on your own journey with these wonderful little instruments.
Where it all started
I imagine like a lot of people, I was gifted my first Harmonica. From the first blow of that 24-hole plastic monstrosity, I knew this was the instrument for me. The simplicity of being able to play a song immediately but with the depth of skill needed to make it sound amazing, had me hooked.
Over the years, the harmonica took a back seat but in a recent clear out, there it sat waiting to be played again. I tooted on it and instantly those feelings from years ago came flooding back. Older, wiser and with a bit more focus, I decided to really try and master this wonderful instrument. As much as I loved that old Harmonica, I knew it wasn’t a proper instrument, so I invested in a Hohner Special 20 and committed to getting better.
In the beginning, I bought books and devoured videos to learn the art from the masters. I’d play along but never be quite sure if I was matching what they were doing, or if their superb skills were covering the cracks in my own renditions. At the time I’d put myself a little scrapbook together to keep my tabs in because remembering all the notes has never come naturally to me.
Being a bit of a geek, I knew there had to be a better way of storing all this knowledge I was chronicling in my scrapbook, and the idea for Harmonova was born.
From thinking about a simple app to store my tabs, it grew arms and legs and now as you’ll see from the swathes of documentation and videos I’ve created, it’s more than just something to store your tabs in!
But as they say in one of my favourite movies:
Get in touch
I try to reply to all the email sent to me. If you have feedback or just want to tell me about your journey, feel free to reach out: support@harmonova.app
All the best, Gareth